Wings of Flame
by ThePaperBagPrincess
Summary: She is the brightest light; fearless as she flies. But her burning wings are made of wax, and when it is burnt through, she will fall.


**Disclaimer: I do not own these characters, neither do I own the quotes/lyrics. The characters belong to JK Rowling, and the quotes to Oscar Wilde, Simon and Garfunkel, Leonard Cohen and Aerosmith.**

**Warning: Contains themes of a mildly adult nature, including drug abuse, violence, and non-graphic sexual situations.**

**A/N: This story is a challenge fic for a challenge made and accepted so long ago that the challenger has probably forgotten she made it. However, here you go, Hope, for your 'Write a Pairing you Hate' challenge. I chose the one Next Gen pairing I really couldn't imagine. Maybe that's why it turned out so dark. However, I can genuinely say that I don't really hate this pairing any more, so thanks for that.**

**And the dedication has to be shared with Ellie, in memory of all the arguments. ;)**

* * *

><p><em>"Never regret thy fall,<em>  
><em>O Icarus of the fearless flight.<em>  
><em>For the greatest tragedy of them all<em>  
><em>Is never to feel the burning light."<em>

She's on the road to self-destruction, and he doesn't know what to do about it.

She always seemed so tough. She learnt self-defence in a hard school, with two older brothers and a dozen cousins. The general public wanted Harry Potter's daughter to be innocent and sweet; a princess in the Wizarding World. What Lily became was something altogether different. She was a firestorm; a tornado of red hair and neon make-up and bad attitude.

She was one of his best friends, strange though that might seem, given that he's ten years older than her. His friends never understood why he put up with the little red-haired girl, but the truth is that at the age of seven, she could make him laugh like nobody else could, and that never changed. Her laugh was bright; bright as her hair, bright as the make-up she wears, bright like a thousand city lights on a winter evening.

It's still bright, but now it's brittle-bright. Dazzling and hard-edged and white hot, and she's burning so hard she's going to burn herself out, and that breaks his heart.

_He remembers the day clearly. She was eighteen; it was the Easter of her final year at Hogwarts. He was nearly twenty eight, although he couldn't quite believe it. Two years off thirty, but he still felt like a kid. He'd said that to Harry and Harry had laughed and said that he did too; he'd said he didn't think you ever really _felt_ grown up. _

_Maybe it was because of that. Because he was getting older, but he didn't want to be - wanted to stay as young as he felt. Maybe that was why he noticed Lily properly for the first time._

_She came downstairs in scarlet high-top trainers, paired with bright blue leggings and skimpy denim shorts and a black leather jacket, because Lily's always had the audacity to wear whatever the hell she wants to wear, and screw anyone who judges her on it. The April sun was shining through the window on her, there was a smile on her face, and Teddy had always liked to look at her like that, because she was so happy and confident and unbreakable. Then he realised with a shock that was almost a punch in the stomach that he really should _not_ be looking at her legs for that long, or enjoying the view that much._

_She didn't notice. She gave him a cheeky grin as he lay on their sofa – he spent half his life at the Potters' house – and ruffled his hair as she passed, with fingernails painted the colour of a Mediterranean sky. Then she left the house, off to meet some friend or other, and never realised that Teddy Lupin had been struck dumb by the thunderbolt realisation that he was in love with Lily Potter._

_Victoire noticed, because Victoire noticed everything. That was part of what had made her attractive to him during that happy, dream-filled summer romance, that had faded naturally into nothing once she had gone back to school. No, not nothing, because they both had nostalgic memories of that teenage love affair, even though the hormone-driven feelings were long gone, and they understood each other as only close friends could. This; this was different. This was no sweet teenage crush, it was real and raw and dangerous and it scared him, and so, of course, Victoire noticed._

"_She's only eighteen."_

"_I know. I know. I'm a sick pervert..."_

"_I never said that. She's overage. You're not a pervert. She's just so young..."_

"_She'd never look at me. Not like that."_

"_You don't know that. But she doesn't know what she wants yet."_

"_Lily always knows what she wants."_

"_Do you think so? I don't. I think you need to be careful of her, if that's really how you feel. Because she acts like she knows what she's doing, but she's only eighteen, and I don't think she does."_

And he didn't listen to her, because Lily was bright and strong and so alive, and she was flying, far and high, beyond his reach. But in the end, Victoire was right, because Lily was flying too close to the sun, and now he can see that her wings are made of wax, like those in the Muggle myth his grandmother read him when he was a child, and, like Icarus, she will fall, and there's nothing he can do to save her from it.

* * *

><p><em>In restless dreams I walked alone<em>  
><em>Narrow streets of cobblestone<em>  
><em>'Neath the halo of a street lamp<em>  
><em>I turned my collar to the cold and damp<em>  
><em>When my eyes were stabbed by the flash of a neon light<em>  
><em>That split the night<em>  
><em>And touched the sound of silence<em>

She is lost, but she is pretending not to be.

If she pretends for long enough, it will be true.

She knows he isn't good for her, but oh Merlin, it _feels_ so good, and so _right_, when she's with him. It all just slips into place, and she's burning for him, and the lights seem brighter, and in the middle of it all, he's there.

His handsome face is laughing at her, eyes blazing, charmed tongue doing its work, fingers dancing over her skin. They've all told her he's no good, but she is Lily Potter, and she's never listened to what other people say. And when he's not with her, all that's left is a hollow emptiness and an echoing silence. Like now.

She's stumbled out of the party, and the night-lit city is shimmering in a frightening way. The lights are too bright and the buildings loom out of nowhere and every shadow seems to hold a large-eyed grotesque with a knife, until she turns to face the shadow and the figures fade into the night, leaving her shaking and her head spinning. It is cold and drizzling, but she hardly notices.

She told him she wanted to leave, but he was having fun. They'd reached the stage of the evening when figures were draped over chairs and the floor, amid the debris the party had left, but he was still going strong. Because he never had as much as anyone else – never had as much as _her. _He said it was so that he could look after her. But he didn't look after her. He didn't listen when she asked to leave. "Not yet," was all he said, and then his attention was lost, and it is always like that. When they are alone, it is perfect, but when he is among his friends, it's as if she's almost invisible, and he just expects her to wait for him.

And the terrifying part is how little she minds this. The old Lily would have been furious at being treated like that, but the old Lily has been numbed and frozen. This is normal. This is right. And if this is the only way she can keep him, this is how it has to be.

_She remembers the day clearly. It was New Year, the winter after she finished Hogwarts, and she was at a party. It was a big party, with lots of people there she didn't know very well, some of them quite a lot older than her._

_He came and introduced himself and bought her a drink, and she was instantly mesmerised. He was different from the boys she usually hung around with. He was older; more sophisticated on the outside, but with a wild look in his eyes, and a reckless way of smiling that said that here was a rebel. And Lily had always been drawn like a magnet to rebels._

_He smiled at her, and she was hooked. He introduced her to all kinds of things later, but the strongest drug of all was just him. Exhilarating, intoxicating, dizzying and oh, so dangerous._

_He knew how to play her. He bought her things – because he always had plenty of money – and he took her out to places she'd never been before. She was just a teenager, who hung around with other teenagers; they never haunted the more upmarket, expensive places. And it was the novelty of the thing that she enjoyed; the excitement of being shown a new and glittering world. His friends were fun and fast-paced and wild, and she enjoyed being with them. It was 'just this once' when he handed her the cigarette that she knew didn't only contain tobacco, and 'just this once' again when he offered her the little white pill... and they were all doing it, so how could she say no? She didn't want to say no, not at first, because 'yes' was more fun. Later, when she tried to refuse, he laughed at her, and dropped it in her drink instead. And she watched him do it, so she knew it was there, but it would just have been petty to refuse to drink it, especially since he'd bought it for her._

_Lily knew her family hoped that he was nothing but a phase; that she would tire of him as quickly as she tired of the others. But she also knew – just as she knows now – that he was far too addictive for her to 'tire' of, and that whatever this was, it wasn't just a 'phase.'_

_It was Rose who saw what was happening first and tried to talk to her about it. But Rose could only say bad things about him – she couldn't see the man behind the monster, or any reason why Lily might love him. She thought it was an infatuation – that was the word she used, among others. Harsh, ugly words that made Lily angry._

"_He's just a smarmy bastard, Lily. He doesn't give a shit about you; he just keeps you around to be a pretty little accessory. Is that really all you want to be? Are you really happy like this? What does he give you, Lil? What are you taking? Because whatever it is, you need to wake up and stop..."_

"_Piss off, Rosie! Just fuck off out of my life, if that's all you've got to say! You don't know anything about us! Is it so hard to believe that we're actually in love with each other? What you see is nothing, because the bits that matter are the bits nobody sees."_

"_That's what I'm worried about. The bits nobody sees... What's he done to you? I can't even see the Lily I knew any more. She's gone. You were so much more than this, Lil. I don't even recognise you any more. Please... get out of it. I don't want to have to talk to Aunt Ginny and Uncle Harry."_

"_You'd talk to my parents? Fine. Go on then. There's nothing they can do either. I'm an adult. I can run my own life. I don't need you. I don't need anyone. Just because you've never been in love before. Just because you're lonely and bitter and jealous..."_

_And when Rose had gone, she went and cried on him, partly because she was hurt, and partly because she felt guilty for words that she knew were unfair – words that she knew had hurt Rose as much as Rose had hurt her. And he held her, and stroked her hair and whispered in her ear, and she thought that if Rose could see this, she wouldn't say those things..._

"_You're not..." she murmured, "You're not those things. You're good for me. I like being with you. I love you."_

"_Of course I'm not," his hands stroked her back, "You're my beautiful Lily and I don't want to hurt you."_

_And she knew it was true, because it felt so right, and her body was on fire for him, and that night, her soul belonged to him._

* * *

><p><em>I did my best, it wasn't much<em>  
><em>I couldn't feel, so I tried to touch<em>  
><em>I've told the truth, I didn't come to fool you<em>  
><em>And even though it all went wrong<em>  
><em>I'll stand before the Lord of Song<em>  
><em>With nothing on my tongue but Hallelujah<em>

He finds her that night, crumpled on the doorstep, and it's all his nightmares come true. His Lily; his little firestorm; his fearless, winged Icarus. She has fallen, and she lies in a sodden, lifeless heap at his feet, and for a moment, he thinks she is dead. Her skin is so white it's almost blue, and she is wearing a black dress, and he remembers, although it's hardly relevant, the vivid colours she always used to wear. Now the only colour about her is her flame-red hair, although even that is darkened by the drenching rain.

He drops down beside her, heedless of his clean trousers and the wet, muddy step. Her skin is cold and wet against his touch, but her chest is rising rapidly up and down, and the ice around his heart, which formed at the thought of her dead, melts, flooding him with love and fear and desperation and anger – anger with the people who have done this to her.

She won't wake up and he apparates her to St Mungo's, appearing in the entrance hall in rain-dampened clothes and carrying her unconscious form in his arms, drawing horrified stares from all the neatly-dressed people come to visit friends and relatives.

There is a flurry of activity round them, but Teddy feels as though it is happening far away. The only thing that is real is the white-faced girl with the slowly drying red hair plastered to her head. He stays with her, against their wishes, until she wakes up, and he stops them from contacting her parents, although he feels guilty for this, as though he is betraying an unspoken trust.

But he has surely already betrayed that trust by falling in love with her. And anyway, she came to _him_.

Once her eyes are open, although she does not speak, and he is convinced that she is not really going to die immediately, they chase him away, telling him that she needs to rest. A healer speaks seriously to him outside, but he only hears half the words. She needs help. He knows that, but he doesn't know how to give her it.

He drinks a foul-tasting coffee in the St Mungo's café and sits at a small table, staring at nothing as the time passes, his mind a blank. All he can think of is Lily, so it is better not to think.

When he returns to her, she is sitting up, shadows like bruises under her eyes, hazel eyes dark in her pale face, and he thinks that he has never seen anything more heartbreaking than the emptiness in those once-sparkling eyes.

"Why?" he asks, just once, and she turns away.

"Don't, Teddy."

So he doesn't; he just takes her in his arms and holds her, like he used to hold her when she was a little girl, woken from a nightmare. But this time, he cannot assure her that it was 'just a dream.'

He tries; he tries to bring her back. She can get out of it, he tells her. He can help her. Her parents can help her. She doesn't have to do it any more. She needs to get away from him; from the bastard who made her into this. She can do it; she can walk away. She _must_ walk away, before it's too late.

But she looks at him, hollow eyes shimmering with tears, and she shakes her head.

"It's already too late, Teddy," she whispers, "I can't. I can't because I don't want to. I'm sorry, Teddy…"

And she pulls away from him, and he knows that he has lost her.

But even now, Teddy cannot give up hope. Because he still has the knowledge that, for whatever reason – and she probably doesn't even know it herself – when she was lost that night, she came to _him_.

* * *

><p><em>With the blink of an eye you finally see the light<em>  
><em>When the moment arrives that you know you'll be alright<em>  
><em>And I'm saying a prayer for the desperate hearts tonight<em>

She knows what she has done. She knows that she has hurt Teddy, although perhaps she doesn't know how much. She knows that her family are desperately worried, even though they don't know the worst of it. But she is drawn back to him, like a moth to a flame. Back to the white hot fire of him, with a sick feeling in her stomach because she knows, which a moth cannot, that she is going to be burned.

She clings, with increasing desperation, to the idea that they are in love. That love, as her parents taught her, is stronger than any dark forces. Their love makes it all worthwhile.

Then she discovers that strong forces are not infallible and that love can be false, and she realises that her ability to feel pain has not been as numbed as she thought it had, which would be a relief if it didn't hurt so much.

He has hit her before; exasperated slaps in the heat of anger, which he smoothes away with kisses afterwards. And again, part of her knows that there was a time when she would not have taken this. When she would have slapped back, and left, never to return.

But now she convinces herself that it is all right; that he does not mean it; that it doesn't matter very much. He has never hit her hard enough to bruise her. Even if he had; even if he had punched with all his strength, she doesn't think he could have hurt her as much as he hurts her heart when she comes into the flat they share to find him entwined with a dark-haired, olive-skinned beauty dressed in a pair of scarlet heels and nothing else. The room burns with their passion; the girl's cries of pleasure ring loud in her ears, drowning out the sound that is Lily's heart shattering.

She stands there for what seems like years; poised on the edge of a nightmarish drop, and she knows, in some detached part of her brain, that this is the moment.

If there is anything left of the girl she once was; the girl who believed in herself and in life; the fearless girl with the wings of flame, then now is the moment that that girl must fight. If anything of her wings remain, she must find those charred and twisted things and fly one last time.

She is on his doorstep again, but this time she is standing upright, although she looks like she's been out all night, and her eyes blaze with a cold light that he has never seen before. It is better than the mute, dead look that she has worn for so long, and his heart leaps to see it, but then twists anew for her, because that new icy fire is terrifying.

But he lets her in without a word, only speaking her name as she silently crosses his doorstep.

"Lily…"

She does not reply; she snatches a glass off his kitchen cabinet, and she flings it with all her strength – although it isn't much – at the opposite wall. He flinches as the glass shatters, bright morning sunlight making rainbows through the shards, and he watches almost in slow motion as the pieces fall, the sound they make jarringly musical.

He does not stop her as she grabs another and repeats the motion. She is a whirlwind of destruction, but for once it is not herself that she is destroying, so he lets her do it, although they will be nearly impossible to mend.

Only when there are no more glasses left on the cabinet does she stop.

She turns to him, and there is despair and agony in her eyes; so much that he wants to weep for her. But his tears will be mingled with joy, for behind the anguish, there is life once more. Lily, and not a ghost, looks out of those hazel eyes again, from which the tears are pouring.

She speaks just one word.

"Teddy."

And then she is sobbing in his arms, and he doesn't know what will happen; doesn't know if they are in time for her; doesn't know if he can keep her. She doesn't love him the way he loves her, but it hardly matters.

What matters is that she has, again, come to him – and maybe she will not stay, but the life he sees in her eyes, and the tears themselves, give him hope that perhaps she will.

And maybe it is faint, false hope, but it is hope nonetheless.

She has flown, and she has fallen; fallen so far and so hard, but her light is not quite extinguished. He has not yet quite lost her to the darkness. She is here in his arms, and he will not let go.


End file.
